Fuji Two new Voigtländer lenses for X-Mount

Ghostbuggy

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Phill
Cosina has announced two new lenses designed for Fujifilms X-Mount under their Voigtländer brand in order to extent the already existing trio.

First there is another 50'ish equiv. lens with the Nokton 35mm f0.9 lens. It is quite a bit bulkier and heavier than the 35mm f1.2 weighting 492gr, almost 300gr more than the f1.2 Nokton. It comes with a lens hood included.

The next lens is a pancake styled 40'ish equiv. lens with the Ultron 27mm f2. Weighting just 120gr and a length of just 23,5mm this new Ultron is perfect for a compact body like an X-E. It doesn't come with a lens hood.

Like all previous X-Mount Voigtländer lenses, both feature electronic contacts in order to communicate with the camera.

 
I still haven't gotten the Nokton 23mm f1.2 I have been eyeing ever since it got released. Personally I am not too interested in the new 35 f0.9 due to the weight, but I am sure it will be an interesting lens. So far all of the Voigtländer X-Mount lenses have a great reputation, even though most are fairly "dreamy" wide open and only get sharper from f1.8 onwards.

The 27mm actually looks more interesting, I can see it attached to my X-Pro3 as an ultra compact solution.
 
Certainly good to see Cosina being active on the lenses front for mirrorless cameras. For me personally it's a bit saddening that they didn't offer anything new for Sony E-mount. And no, I won't adapt lenses with Leica M bayonet (VM in Cosina speak): their design is not optimized for the Sony sensor with its thicker glass covers than the sensors in Leica M cameras, and I won't spend a lot of money on lenses that don't transfer EXIF data to the camera, thank you very much.

Cosina's product policy seems very odd to me, by the way: for each lens mount they offer different lens types. You'd think they'd capitalize on their development cost by offering the same optical and, in some cases, mechanical design in as many mounts as possible.
 
Fred Miranda has shared a few sample images of the tiny 27mm pancake lens:

They are fairly small though.
I don't do much pixel peeping - I really like what I see, with one exception, and it's way too early to be sure about that: Bokeh seems kind of rough at times, very busy. But what I see appears not to be consistent, so we can't be sure yet what's really going on. Everything else strikes me as really quite impressive, especially considering the small size and sufficiently fast aperture of the lens. That said, this will have some optical limitations - but if they're along the lines of the Nikon Z 40mm f/2 (some softness in some situation, a little bit of haloing/spherical abberations and CA, occasionally), I consider them to be fully acceptable - though I'd like close-up bokeh to be sufficiently smooth. To sum up: very intriguing offering - but I want to see a production sample put thorugh its paces. I do hope they're going to offer it for other mounts as well, anyway.

M.
 
It's a little annoying that the elec contacts aren't usable for the X-pro2 , but I'm still interested in this lens. Since it's designed for the x-mount, I'm hoping the distance scales/infinity point are accurate.
 
I also don't know exactly why the X-Pro2 isn't supported, their whole X-Mount line-up would go really well with that camera. From what I've heard, Fujifilm made some changes with their communication protocolls between the X-Pro2 and X-T2, which causes issues. But it's still odd, since essentially all other 3rd party AF lenses are fully compatible with the whole line of X-System cameras.
 
I also don't know exactly why the X-Pro2 isn't supported, their whole X-Mount line-up would go really well with that camera. From what I've heard, Fujifilm made some changes with their communication protocolls between the X-Pro2 and X-T2, which causes issues. But it's still odd, since essentially all other 3rd party AF lenses are fully compatible with the whole line of X-System cameras.

I could maybe understand the parallax frameline adjustments in the OVF not working, but you'd have thought that aperture value would at least be readable.

My other Fuji - an X-T1 - Im not surprised isn't compatible. But the Pro2 is curious.
 
As said earlier, I am not sure as of why the X-Pro2 isn't really supported. Maybe you could contact Voigtländer / Cosina about it, but I guess if it would be a simple task, they would've included the XP2 already, since it's kind of a no-brainer to especially include this camera for their MF lenses.

There are some minor new regarding the new lenses: The Ultron 27mm is available for pre-order here in Germany and should arrive sometime next month. Price is set to EUR 549 - to compare it with some other Voigtländer lenses: The 23mm Nokton is €699, the 35mm Nokton is €649. The ultra fast 35mm on the other hand still isn't listed.
 
The 27mm Nokton lens started hitting the shelves here in Germany, it seems like it's already available in Asian countries since two or three weeks. You can find some videos on Youtube showing some samples as well as some hands-on reports like this one:

Fred Miranda has posted a review as well:

The lens is about the same size as the Fujifilm 27mm f2.8 but a bit heavier, most likely due to the superior build quality. First samples look nice, however I'm still not in the market for such a lens.
 
Voigtlander about to release a Fuji-specific 50/1.2.





Unfortunately, like the 27mm , it's not fully compatible with the X-pro2 . But it's great to see a full range of Fuji specific manual lenses emerging. Maybe I'll have to buy an XT3, XT5 or Xpro3 to use them to their max potential, lol.

Edit - Actually, the X-T2 is also compatible with the electronic contacts. That might be the cheapest way in if we want to know the aperture etc.
 
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The Ultron 27mm looks quite interesting.
It turns out Fred Miranda did a rather thorough review of the lens in June. If anyone is at all interested in the lens, it's an interesting read.

 
The Nokton 50mm f1.2 just started hitting the shelves of a number of German camera stores a few days ago, it is priced somewhat higher than the previous lenses at EUR 749. Unfortunately no store in the Berlin region seems to have gotten any stock yet (or it is already sold), otherwise I might've even hopped on a train today to check it out in person.
I am very tempted to order one, but I am still waiting for a potential frustrating bill hitting my mailbox, so I most likely will keep waiting.
 
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